Coming out on the internet

My response to the election was to come out as bisexual online, and here’s why

Standing at the back of the Sunday School classroom turned music extravaganza for Vacation Bible School, I looked out on all the adorable kids learning the motions to the theme song for the week.  I am in high school.  I loveeeee church. I am here, of my own volition, as often as I can be.  I find God in the community and the studying of the Bible, and I want to know this Jesus person for myself.  Naturally, I jumped at the chance to volunteer as a leader at VBS.

The kids are singing about being beautifully and wonderfully made, circa Psalm 139.  An adult volunteer, a woman with the kindest voice and luscious, rich brown hair is explaining to them what that means.  

She’s telling them the Good News: they are beloved by God.  The God of the whole world took the time to knit them together in their mother’s womb.  God knows every part of them and delights in what God finds there.  There is nothing they could do to separate themselves from the love of God.  They are beautifully and wonderfully made, exactly as they are, accepted and loved to the very core of their being.

I am not sure how closely the kids are listening to her lesson, perhaps they are eager to get back to the singing.  But I hang on the teacher’s every word.  I fully believe what she is saying for these kids.  And it moves me.

Then a thought pops into my head: What if one of these kids is gay?

What if they grow up hearing this very Good News that they are completely and totally loved, crafted to be exactly as they are by Love, and they believe it.  Then one day, when they’re older, they realize they’re gay.  And they receive messages implicitly and explicitly saying that that whole thing about being fully loved, beautifully and wonderfully made exactly as they are doesn’t apply to them.  At least not all of who they are.  At least not this part.  

I wonder this as a teenager watching this beautiful moment transpire as I genuinely believe in this love the kind-voiced teacher is describing.  

I think to myself if it is true, then it must be true for everyone all the time, no matter what.  Because if not, can it be called Good News?  Can it be called Love?  

As a high schooler volunteering at VBS, I had no idea that I was bisexual.  At least, not consciously.  I was pulling this thread of how far God’s love, as it was taught to me, actually goes on behalf of the kids at VBS.   But really, I was wondering about myself, about all of us, too.

It wasn’t until about a decade later while in seminary that I began to wonder if I was bisexual.  I attribute this not only to all the dismantling and unlearning of systems and theologies of oppression I was doing in the classroom, but also to the fact that many of my friends in seminary are queer.

This is usually the point in the story where I joke, “And it turns out, being gay really is contagious!”  But some might not be ready for that joke yet.  (Though, every time I have told it, it’s killed, just so you know.)

But here’s what I mean–being gay is not contagious, but being free is.  Seeing something up close that you were told was evil and sinful be good and life giving and, frankly, holy changes things.  It shook things loose in me that I didn’t know were there.  

Queer community, being surrounded by queer love, created enough safety for the much repressed part of me to peek out her sweet, little bisexual eyes from where she was hiding. And, THANK GOD FOR THAT!!!  

Let’s be clear, I fully freaked out.  I experienced my obligatory gay panic moment.  I had to double down on excavating my own internalized homophobia.  At this point, I no longer believed gay folks were sinful deviants.  I no longer believed being gay was a sin.  But that is very different from believing what that kind-voiced teacher said all those years ago for myself–that I am beautifully and wonderfully made by God, exactly as I am.  

It has taken a lot to believe that enough to accept myself.  It’s an ongoing process.  I feel doubtful there’s a destination.  Rather I imagine it is just a continual peeling back of all the ways I have been taught to hate and distrust myself in order to believe that I am beloved.

My students help with this.  I am a Campus Minister for an organization that is one of just two LGBTQIA+ affirming student ministries at the university.  I believe so fiercely that my students are beloved by God.  They deserve full, rich, abundant flourishing lives.  

I believe now, genuinely more than ever, that God is better than we have been led to believe.  

I believe now, genuinely more than ever, that we are better than we have been led to believe.  

I believe my students deserve to live in a country that not only affirms their humanity, but also legislates protection of their inherent human rights.  In fact, I believe this for myself too.  I believe this for all people no matter who they are, but especially for those who hold identities that are systemically marginalized–queer folks, Black folks, brown folks, indigenous folks, disabled folks, immigrant folks, trans folks, folks with uteruses, non-Christian folks.  And I especially believe it for these folks not in spite of my love and commitment to Jesus, but precisely because of it.  

This is why two weeks ago when the results of the election came out, so did I.  

The results revealed that once again we as a country elected an individual, and an ideology, that actively disparages the humanity of basically everyone and has talked a big game about legislating away human rights that would directly impact myself, my students, and those whom Jesus loves.

And I couldn’t pretend to not be impacted as a queer person.  I couldn’t espouse hope and resolve and grief in a public way without standing in my full identity, my full humanity.

Well, actually, I suppose I could have.  But I didn’t want to anymore.  

I am an immensely privileged person in the matrix that is white supremacy, capitalism, all the isms.  And yet I do have something to lose in being my full self out loud and in public.  I stand to lose relationships with family members and acquaintances.  I stand to lose the  safety afforded in being straight passing.  There’s rooms I won’t be invited into anymore.  There’s people who will discount all of my theological training and teaching because they think you can’t be gay and Christian, let alone gay, a woman, and a pastor.  

Lately I’ve been learning from the work of Tricia Heresy, the founder of the Nap Ministry and fellow Candler School of Theology alumna, recently.  She describes reaching this point of “letting the chips fall where they may.”  She knew there would be negative consequences to listening to her intuition, listening to the Spirit, and resting in the face of a grueling, capitalistic world.  And still she chose what she knew she had to in order to embody her full humanity. So she did so and said, “Let the chips fall where they may.”  That’s how I feel right now.

Let the chips fall where they may.

I am not in charge of all the chips, all the reactions of others to me deigning to embody my full humanity, including my sexuality.  That’s, frankly, none of my business.

But what quite literally is my business–I have made it my business by way of employment and vocation–is to scream from the rooftops QUEER FOLKS ARE BELOVED BY GOD!!!! 

We are beautifully and wonderfully made, exactly as we are.  There is nothing we have done, nothing we could do to separate ourselves from the love of God.  God knit us together in our mothers’ womb exactly as we are.  This is the Good News and it applies to us, too.  

So, I came out as bisexual on the internet in response to the election.  And I plan to stay out here and make some good trouble.  I plan to share this Good News in any and every way I can, with any and everyone I can and let the chips fall where they may.

Psalm 139: 13-18 (NRSVUE Translation)

For it was you who formed my inward parts;

    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

    Wonderful are your works;

that I know very well.

    My frame was not hidden from you,

when I was being made in secret,

    intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.

In your book were written

    all the days that were formed for me,

    when none of them as yet existed.

How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!

    How vast is the sum of them!

I try to count them—they are more than the sand;

    I come to the end—I am still with you.

Much, much, much love,

Hunter